Publications

Article

Money is No Object: Testing The Endowment Effect in Exchange Goods

By: Dan Svirsky

We present a new experimental design to test whether the endowment effect exists for exchange goods, like money. We compare three groups to a baseline: one endowed with money, one endowed with chocolate coins, and one endowed with chocolate coins described as "tokens."... View Details

Keywords: Perception; Valuation; Goods and Commodities; Attitudes

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Research Summary

Risk, Trust and Escalation Behavior of Owner Managers

By: Cynthia A. Montgomery

Professor Montgomery and Professor Deepak Malhotra (HBS), together with scientists from Harvard's Program on Evolutionary Dynamics, are studying risk-related decision making of owner managers in newly-founded and established companies. This experimental... View Details

Research Summary

Consumer Behavior and Health

Professor Riis studies consumer behavior and health using the methods and theories of experimental psychology and behavioral economics. Particular problems that he is currently investigating include:

• Information use and decision making in food service... View Details

2003
Case

Capston-White's Document Management and Production Services

By: Vijay Govindarajan, Chris Trimble and Julie Lang

The development of multi-function devices that could copy, print, fax, and scan created a convergence in the markets for these devices. Copiers and printers had previously been purchased and managed in very different manners by large organizations. Facing an uncertain... View Details

Keywords: Technological Innovation; Innovation Strategy; Service Delivery; Service Industry

2003
Case

Corning Microarray Technologies

By: Vijay Govindarajan, Chris Trimble and Gautam Bellur

In mid-2000, the scientific community reached a momentous milestone—the complete mapping of the human genome. Researchers in the field of genomics were anxious to dig into a tremendous array of newly possible scientific inquiries, and needed efficient experimental... View Details

Keywords: Expansion; Genetics; Manufacturing Industry; Industrial Products Industry

22 Jul 2015
News

The behavioural economics of voluntary disclosure

June 2008
Article

Minimally Acceptable Altruism and the Ultimatum Game

By: Julio J. Rotemberg

I suppose that people react with anger when others show themselves not to be minimally altruistic. With heterogeneous agents, this can account for the experimental results of ultimatum and dictator games. Moreover, it can account for the surprisingly large fraction of... View Details

Keywords: Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; Game Theory; Mathematical Methods

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05 Nov 2018
News

Using Experiments to Launch New Products

May 2014 (Revised March 2016)
Case

Health City Cayman Islands

By: Tarun Khanna and Budhaditya Gupta

Narayana Health (NH) had been successfully delivering affordable high quality tertiary care to the masses in India through its chain of hospitals for over a decade. To encourage the adoption of the NH affordable care delivery model worldwide, Dr. Shetty, Chairman of... View Details

July 2023
Article

Design and Analysis of Switchback Experiments

By: Iavor I Bojinov, David Simchi-Levi and Jinglong Zhao

In switchback experiments, a firm sequentially exposes an experimental unit to a random treatment, measures its response, and repeats the procedure for several periods to determine which treatment leads to the best outcome. Although practitioners have widely adopted... View Details

Keywords: Switchback Experiments; Design; Analysis; Mathematical Methods

15 Apr 2015
HBS Seminar

Raymond Fisman, Columbia Business School

February 2023
Case

Success Academy Charter Schools

By: Robin Greenwood, Joshua D. Coval, Denise Han, Ruth Page and Dave Habeeb

This stand-alone multimedia case follows the story of Eva Moskowitz and Success Academy, a network of high-performing charter schools in New York City. As a New York City councilor between 1999 and 2006, Moskowitz became frustrated over the inertia and dysfunction in... View Details

Keywords: Business and Government Relations; Performance Effectiveness; Equality and Inequality; Private Sector; Education Industry; New York (city, NY)

March 2016 (Revised February 2023)
Exercise

Advertising Experiments at RestaurantGrades

By: Michael Luca, Weijia Dai and Hyunjin Kim

Advertising Experiments at RestaurantGrades is an exercise in which students are asked to analyze and make a recommendation on the basis of simulated experimental data. The setting is a hypothetical restaurant review company called RestaurantGrades (RG), which shows... View Details

Keywords: Analysis; Digital Marketing

October 1996 (Revised April 1997)
Case

Team New Zealand (A)

By: Marco Iansiti and Alan D. MacCormack

The case describes the development process used by Team New Zealand to design their two yachts for the 1995 America's Cup. During development, the team makes extensive use of simulation and physical prototyping to improve the initial design concept. As they approach... View Details

Keywords: Product Design; Design; Product Development; Sports; Ship Transportation; Research and Development; Situation or Environment; Decisions; Sports Industry; New Zealand

04 Jan 2011
Working Paper Summaries

The Learning Effects of Monitoring

Keywords: by Dennis Campbell, Marc Epstein & Francisco de Asis Martinez-Jerez; Entertainment & Recreation

March 2018 (Revised September 2023)
Case

X: The Foghorn Decision

By: Robert S. Huckman, Karim R. Lakhani and Kyle R. Myers

In February 2016, Kathy Hannun—a project leader at X, Alphabet Inc.'s so-called "moonshot factory"—had to prepare a recommendation for the senior leadership of X regarding the future of Foghorn, a project she was leading to develop a carbon-neutral process for... View Details

Keywords: Innovation; R＆D Project Management; Radical Innovation; Clean Technology; Innovation and Management; Technological Innovation; Energy; Research and Development; Projects; Management; Decision Choices and Conditions; Technology Industry; Energy Industry; Green Technology Industry; California

Research Summary

Interpersonal Communication & Human-Computer Interaction

This stream of research, combining methods from experimental psychology and natural language processing, investigates behaviors that improve interpersonal communication. In our paper on question-asking published in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,... View Details

Keywords: Communication; Responsiveness; Negotiation; Gender Stereotypes

12 Nov 2013
News

Innovation Can't be Measured in Dollars: Harvard Prof Stefan Thomke

June 2024
Case

Building Innovation at VINCI

By: Dennis Campbell, Aluna Wang and Carlota Moniz

This case study explores how the VINCI Group, a French multinational operating in concessions, energy, and construction, bolstered awareness and adoption rates of new technologies within the organization. Through its separate innovation hub, Leonard, VINCI aimed to... View Details